Posts Tagged ‘Art Johnston Sidetrack

[ Click above to embiggen: Some of the promotional material for website www.BradleyThomasComic.com, which was wiped clean of all content on the morning of Friday 5/31/13 after our initial reporting on “The Case of the Stripping School Teacher” was published ]

A sixth grade teacher in a Chicago Public School classroom has been identified as a moonlighting stand-up comic who mocks his black students’ names, intelligence, and home life in degrading “comedy routines” staged in the city’s LGBTQAI community…where gay Chicago men have a longstanding habit of making racist, “ghetto” jokes at the expense of black people…but are never called-out on it because gays are a protected and favored class in our national media; a gay public school teacher ridiculing and degrading his black students for the amusement of gay audiences thus pits two of the institutional Left’s primary demographic groups against one another in as politically-incorrect terms as possible. Chicago’s now faced with the rare spectacle of wondering whom the media will side with on this one: the black children being mocked or the gay comic who degrades them on stage?

Bradley Thomas Balof, a gay, white, male teacher at Joseph Stockton Elementary School on the North Side of Chicago continues to perform his standup routine at venues like Zanies in Old Town, with troupes such as OutLoud Chicago, and in appearances at Sidetrack the Video Bar in Boystown (where Balof also serves as the bar’s master-of-ceremonies (MC) for special events and regularly dances nearly-nude as an in-house erotic entertainer).

Balof’s “comedy stylings” at Sidetrack and other gay venues include:

* Mocking the names of his black students, particularly the females, as “Shaquisha”, “Loquisha”, “”Shaniqua” , “Bon’Qui Qui”, and other variations of same that are disturbingly popular “jokes” amongst many gay men in Chicago

* Informing his audiences that he’s a public school teacher in Chicago who is exasperated by the lack of learning ability of his black students…and then detailing their academic struggles on stage in a “my students are so funny, they think 2 plus 2 is 5″ kind of way; other “jokes” in this vein involved the children not knowing what various sexual or other adult terms meant and then having “funny” responses to Balof about them

* Affecting a “ghetto accent” and taking on “ghetto black mannerisms” while telling “jokes” about the black people he claims to encounter during his teaching day

* Ridiculing black parents, especially the mothers, for the poor school performance of their kids

* Maligning black women as welfare queens and linking their reproductive frequency to the lackluster academic performance of their children

* Presenting himself on stage as a sainted martyr for having to “put up with black kids all day at work”

Balof regularly performs these “jokes” as the master-of-ceremonies (MC) for high-profile events held at Sidetrack the Video Bar, which is owned by prominent Chicago gay activists Art Johnston and Jose Pepin “Pepe” “Pep” Pena (who are also the principle fundraisers and founders for/of the lobbying organization Equality Illinois). Johnston and Pena are regularly present for Balof’s comedy routines and laugh along with the rest of the gay audience as Balof mocks black people unrelentingly. This is especially disturbing, since Johnston and Pena take the stage at these same events to promote Equality Illinois’ purported mission of achieving “equality for everyone in Illinois”…but then they laugh uproariously when one of their employees lambasts the culture and intelligence of black Chicago children and their parents.

I have personally and repeatedly complained to both Johnston and Pena about the offensive nature of the “comedy” performed at Sidetrack, with Pena in particular telling me in his thick accent that he didn’t care about complaints and that he “thinks this is funny”…and so Sidetrack will keep doing what it’s been doing, with Pena’s personal approval, regardless of how awful some of these “jokes” truly are.

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Sidetrack the Video Bar films all of its special events MC-ed by Balof and stores these recordings digitally in its VJ/sound booth above its Main Bar room at 3349 N. Halsted in Boystown; as of Friday 5/31/13, it appears an investigation now has been launched by the Chicago Public Schools administration to obtain copies of all these videos for review, as Sidetrack has never made these performances by Balof available on its website or YouTube. There is an entire video production facility in-house and on-site at Sidetrack, with three or four dedicated staff members in charge of filming, editing, and archiving every event that happens in the bar.

[ Click PLAY above: as of this writing, this commercial for “Laugh Track” found on YouTube is the only film from the events available; while it does not show the racist jokes about public school students that are so offensive and only offers a taste of what “Laugh Track” was all about, it does prove that these shows were filmed by Sidetrack using the bar’s video production facilities. You can see screens to the sides of the comics where they’re being projected while they work the microphone; a Sidetrack camera operator was filming them so it could be broadcast on the screens and those performances were then captured digitally and archived in the Sidetrack VJ/sound booth ]

These “Laugh Track” shows were heavily promoted by owners Johnston, Pena, and Hyde with lavish posters and ads in all of the city’s gay entertainment publications. By all accounts, they were extremely well-attended and brought a lot of business into the bar on what was otherwise a slow night of the week. But, the consistently degrading nature of the material aimed at black people and children quickly soured audiences and “Laugh Track” was canceled unceremoniously in 2011…with most references to it disappeared down the “memory hole”. After hoping the ill will and hurt feelings that initial year of performances caused had been forgotten, Sidetrack attempted to resurrect “Laugh Track” again in the spring of 2012…but it was not restored as regularly featured entertainment in the bar. Balof, however, continued his racist comedy stylings at Sidetrack whenever he took the mic as an MC of special events and still performs at Zanies and other venues whenever they will have him…making fun of the black students in his sixth grade class wherever he can plug in a microphone.

Bradley Thomas (www.bradleythomascomic.com) is a comedian, Activist, Teacher, Drag Queen, Leatherman, Bartender, Actor, Model, Bottom. Bradley Thomas does it all. Whether for his weekly show Laugh Track at Sidetrack, Night of 100 Drag Queens, International Mister Leather, or other performances Bradley has been performing as a comedian and emcee for over a decade. His quick wit, and sardonic view help him create stand-up performances that are both relevant and irreverent. Bradley does not shy away from incorporating equality, sexuality, and social justice into his art. Of course, he is quickest to laugh at himself, if you dont beat him to the punch. If laughter is medicine, Bradley hopes his audiences OD every night.

A “bottom”, as listed in the bio above, is a reference to Balof’s preferred position during anal sex (in which he elects to be the receptive partner); this is the first time I’ve ever seen a comedian list personal information such as this in a program bio…and one that his sixth grade students could easily find online in an internet search, no less. Read the rest of this entry »

Gay conservative political analyst, essayist, author and radio and TV commentator on politics, pop culture, LGBTQ issues, and current events. To email Kevin directly with a comment or complaint about this or any article, do so at: HillBuzz@gmail.com

While these events happen on the national scene, you’re no doubt aware that Leftists on all levels (federal, state, county, and local) see nothing wrong with any of this…so long as it’s conservatives and Christians being persecuted by the Obama Regime and the Democrat-controlled federal government. A group of college students even delighted their Leftist professors by getting together to send the IRS a thank-you card for intimidating, bullying, and maliciously auditing opponents of the Obama Regime…and the Democrat “activists” who committed a felony by bugging Senator Mitch McConnell’s office today gleefully exclaimed “they’d do it again!”. The institutional Left firmly believes that when those on the right are on the receiving end of deliberate persecution that the “right” people are “getting what they deserve” and that all ends justify these means. Somewhere in the bowels of Hades, Saul Alinsky is smiling.

If you are a lifelong conservative or religious person who wonders how anyone in this country could ever think it’s a good thing (worthy of a thank-you card, no less) for Democrats to use the government to persecute their professed enemies, then you need to take a look at what happens every day in Leftist-controlled cities like Chicago…and, in particular, enclaves like Boystown where the “gay community” employs these kinds of tactics against their “enemies” all the time (but you just never hear about it because the media won’t report it, since gays are favored tools of the Left and the media will never shine a light on gays’ bad behavior). The deeper you wade into the Left’s marked territory in states like Illinois, the more you will see that the sort of thing the IRS and Eric Holder have been doing is quite commonplace for Obama’s followers nationwide. It’s just standard operating procedure, actually, and gays in Chicago are mostly wondering what took Democrats so long to use the IRS and Justice Department to go for conservatives’ throats like this…because on the local level these guys do things like this all the time to their own personal enemies. It’s just that no one ever tells you about it.

The “gay community” you hear so much about in the media (you know, the special “community” that’s always claiming to be victims of bullying or harassment from others) is actually led by particularly ruthless gay individuals who more often than not are aggressive victimizers themselves…doing the sort of thing to others that they claim conservatives and Christians do to them…and believing they can get away with it because they are gay and are a special, pet class in the eyes of the media. You might remember Bret Easton Ellis calling these people the “gay cultural elite” or “gay magical elves”…but I’ve long-called them “The Gaystapo”, because prominent gay “community leaders” enforce a policy of complete annihilation against any gay man or lesbian who ever speaks out against any of the bad things that gay people do…especially when it’s a case of prominent gays persecuting Christians or using the government to come after their enemies.

I’ve told you before about a shocking lawsuit that is now in the deposition phase and making its way towards trial in the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division in the courtroom of Judge Amy St. Eve…where a former employee of the gay establishment Sidetrack the Video Bar is suing owner Art Johnston (the self-styled “Chicago’s Harvey Milk” and inductee into the local “Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame”) for four counts of sexual harassment (and hostile work environment), religious discrimination (and hostile work environment), retaliation, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

This is a case involving a gay, Christian employee of Johnston’s named “J.P.” who was relentlessly harassed both sexually and because of his religious beliefs while working at Sidetrack…and then he was subjected to emotional torture by Sidetrack’s management and employees for complaining about what was being done to him in a bar owned and operated by “Chicago’s Harvey Milk” and “Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame inductee” Art Johnston. It is the absolute height of hypocrisy and a case that’s got everyone in Boystown buzzing…because it’s horrifying to many to see that after all these years of Johnston taking to soap boxes to claim that gay people were perpetual victims of bullying it’s now clear that gay people can actually be extremely effective bullies of Christians when they intend to be. The whole thing has a very “Bonfire of the Vanities” feel to it, because the case involves the most prominent gay man in Chicago — a person who regularly rails against Christians and conservatives as evil bigots — actually being the one inflicting pain, suffering, and abuse on another and violating a Christian’s civil rights due in part to his commitment to Jesus Christ.

If roles were reversed and it was another story about a prominent religious figure who was openly persecuting a gay guy, the media would be all over this like white on rice (or pink on a drag queen)…but the reason you have not heard a rainbow peep about this from anyone but me is because there is a complete embargo in the news about “gay community leaders” ever doing anything wrong to others. I guess the media believes that if they don’t talk about it, then it never happened…which has been the strategy of choice for the Obama Regime through the IRS scandal, Benghazi, the AP phone taps, Pigford, Fast & Furious, and everything else that’s befallen us in this the Golden Age of Hope and Change.

When this story breaks nationally (and I guarantee it will, if I have to seance the ghosts of Dominick Dunne and Truman Capote to help me cover it on a daily basis when the trial starts) it’s going to be mighty hard for the institutional Left to trot gays out in front of the media in the future and claim conservatives and Christians are so evil…because here in Chicago this case against Johnston and Sidetrack proves that gays are hypocrites…in that they don’t pass up an opportunity to do to others what they claim is so terrible when it’s done to them…because they are just so used to getting away with this stuff and think no one will ever call them out.

Well, I’m calling Art Johnston and Sidetrack out for their bad behavior…and I hope you do too!

J.P., the employee who filed suit against Johnston and Sidetrack, was mercilessly harassed and retaliated against as punishment from Johnston for complaining to the EEOC about the hostile work conditions in Boystown’s largest and best-known gay bar. Johnston, who is a large fundraiser for and cultish supporter of Barack Obama’s, declared all-out war on his former employee in retaliation for his complaint…including falsely challenging the poor guy’s unemployment benefits, with Sidetrack’s chosen representative in the hearings that followed perjuring himself while under oath on five separate occasions in an attempt to tell enough lies to have J.P.’s unemployment benefits taken away from him. The good news is that the administrative judge assigned by the state saw through the perjury and ruled that Sidetrack’s representative, its accountant Bryan Portman, was “not credible”…which is a polite way of saying the man was a damn and dirty liar while under oath; the bad news is that having his unemployment benefits challenged over a period of several months where Sidetrack kept lying during the hearings inflicted severe emotional distress on a young man who was trying desperately to find a new job. Instead of being able to focus on that, he had to worry about what new lies Sidetrack would tell at hearings or what else employees of Johnston’s would do to either silence him or intimidate him into dropping his lawsuit.

Like Obama and Holder on the national level, Johnston’s long been accustomed to fawning praise in the Chicago media, no doubt in part to the large sums of money he gives to causes dear to the institutional Left and the role Johnston has always served as an attack dog in Illinois (always ready, willing, and enthusiastic about making speeches or granting interviews condemning one conservative or Christian or another as evil incarnate and an enemy of gay people…which always comes in handy in election years, because one of Democrats’ favorite tactics is to polarize their opponents as loathsome villains and alienate them from voters because “they are enemies of the gay community”); because of all the chits he’s collected through the years from the Chicago Machine, Johnston behaves like someone who does not believe that laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to him…at least in part because the media refuses to hold prominent gays like him accountable for anything.

All of this is instructive for anyone struggling with what’s happening in Washington right now with Holder and the officials from the IRS who are either lying under oath or are pleading the Fifth (like Lois Lerner from the IRS) to avoid directly lying (since telling the truth would force them to admit they were in fact abusing government agencies to punish and persecute “enemies” of Barack Obama); conservatives always seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that people on the Left have absolutely no qualms about doing things like this…and that they do it every day, in matters local or national. This is just how they are wired and as long as they keep getting away with it they will just keep on doing it. Especially when Democrats hold so many state and national offices.

I became an armchair expert on perjury in the state of Illinois because of this suit that J.P. brought against Johnston and Sidetrack as I’m one of the witnesses in the case and was present when Sidetrack’s accountant, Bryan Portman, lied under oath repeatedly during those IDES hearings. As a result, I have clearly become one of Art Johnston’s most favorite people in the whole wide world. I was forced to submit an affidavit attesting to the fact I witnessed the perjury, as well as evidence that established that Portman was indeed purposefully lying in an attempt to manufacture misconduct on J.P.’s part that would have justified his termination by Johnston. J.P. complained to IDES about the fact that Sidetrack as an employer perjured itself in the hearings…but IDES said it has no mechanism under Illinois statute to do anything about it. An employer lying to IDES is indeed illegal…but IDES isn’t empowered to even so much as fine the employer for doing that.

Apparently, perjury under oath only seems to matter if a prosecutor selectively decides to enforce the statutes prohibiting it; this appears to be one of those “selective enforcement” issues, with prosecutors claiming they never have resources to pursue perjury against someone…unless that person is high profile enough to be dragged before the cameras in some political move Democrats have engineered. I spent a few weeks hounding officials at IDES until I was able to speak to the General Counsel and someone in the Executive Director’s office…and I learned that a big city like Chicago depletes county and state resources in so many other ways that prosecutors will never bring charges against an employer for lying under oath at an unemployment benefits hearing. The fact that the state’s attorney general can credibly say “we don’t have the resources to file charges against Bryan Portman and Sidetrack for perjury” is license for Illinois to just look the other way when a prominent gay-owned business is the victimizer and law-breaking…but you better believe that “resources” would materialize lickety-split if it was a Christian business being accused of perjuring itself in hearings against a gay employee.

Since someone like Art Johnston knows he can get away with almost anything in Illinois, there was nothing to give him any sort of pause when it came to sending Portman to those hearings to perjure himself. He knew he’d never be punished when it was clear Portman was lying and probably figured he’d roll the dice and maybe luck out if Portman was a good enough liar to convince the judge to take J.P.’s benefits away. The goal, according to the suit filed against Johnston and Sidetrack in federal court, was to cause J.P. severe emotional distress by forcing him to worry for months about what was going to happen to his benefits…perhaps in an attempt to get him to drop his suit if Sidetrack would stop challenging those benefits he depended upon.

The media will never allow you to believe that a “gay community” leader like Art Johnston in Chicago can be the victimizer and not a perpetual victim, the way that the institutional Left insists on treating and using gays…but I hope you are smart enough to see just how often “gay community leaders” like Johnston act as the Left’s goon squads and enforcers in the political and cultural arena…since the media prevents conservatives and Christians from ever saying a bad word about gays (lest they be branded the dreaded “homophobes!” pejorative).

In a sick way, it’s almost a sign of immense progress in the country that a man like Johnston — who claims to be an activist and civil rights leader but is really a rather entitled Alinskyite at heart — is now the one abusing other people’s civil rights…since it shows that the march towards equality for gays has finally reached a point where, YES, gays are so equal and mainstream in America now that they are just as likely to victimize others as they are to be victims themselves.

This is quite similar to our first black Attorney General committing perjury, willfully breaking the law, looking the other way and never prosecuting favored groups, and doing all the other terrible things he’s done in the last five years….in much the same way that racist Attorneys General of the past possibly victimized black people under Jim Crowe. But, here in 2013 we have a black AG appointed by the “historic and unprecedented first black president” who uses his office to mostly persecute and punish white people in violation of the law…while in Chicago we’ve got a self-styled “gay community leader” who appears to be the biggest and most abusive bully in town and who does things to his Christian employees that gay people in the past would have accused religious people of doing to them in a 1950s workplace. In a sick way, it’s actually weirdly refreshing that our country has course-corrected in such a way that people who would have been legitimate victims 60 years ago are now so protected and favored in our culture that they feel empowered to assume the roles of victimizers.

We have truly become so equal and advanced in this country that the real racists in power are now black and the malicious bigots are actually now gay…though the Ministry of Truth that is our media continues pretending that the opposite’s still true, even though our world hasn’t been that way in a long, long time.

I’m not sure if that’s the hopeychange Barack Obama promised us back in 2008…but it’s certainly what we’ve got in Chicago and Washington in 2013.

Gay conservative political analyst, essayist, author and radio and TV commentator on politics, pop culture, LGBTQ issues, and current events. To email Kevin directly with a comment or complaint about this or any article, do so at: HillBuzz@gmail.com

Today, Congressman Darrell Issa’s subcommittee held testimony in the House investigation into the weaponization of the IRS as a means to intimidate, harass, and persecute Americans who were affiliated with the Tea Party, Christian groups, or had other conservative leanings. More hearings will come, but the clear pattern we’re seeing on a national level is that the Left uses federal government agencies as goon squads to target Americans on their enemies’ lists…and they believe they can get away with this because of who’s in the White House and who’s running the Justice Department.

On the micro-level of the City of Chicago, there’s a lawsuit currently in federal court in the District of Illinois Eastern Division that’s been filed against Art Johnston and Sidetrack the Video Bar which illustrates that the proclivity of using government agencies to harass “enemies” isn’t reserved for Democrats in Washington, but in fact is just normal operating procedure amongst Leftist “fellow travelers”.

Johnston, a devote Obama supporter and large fundraiser for his personality cult, is currently being sued by a former employee who was fired from his job as a doorman in Johnston’s bar because the employee complained about sexual harassment, religious discrimination, and retaliation (for his complaining to management about the harassment he received from coworkers, managers, and third party customers egged on to harass the Plaintiff by Sidetrack employees). Johnston fired this employee in August of 2011 after the employee hired a lawyer and prepared a complaint to the EEOC about the hostile working conditions that Johnston maintains in Sidetrack the Video Bar.

[ Entrance to Sidetrack the Video Bar in 2008, when Johnston heavily promoted the election of Barack Obama as a fellow traveler ]

Shortly after he fired the employee, Johnston had his accountant, Bryan Portman, file a false challenge to the employee’s unemployment benefits…alleging the employee was terminated for “insubordination”. This was a trumped-up charge because the employee never committed any act of “insubordination” (as a judge would later conclude) and was instead fired for filing an EEOC complaint (which is retaliation prohibited under the Civil Rights Act of 1964). The challenge to the employee’s unemployment benefits was made via the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES), which is the government entity in Illinois that handles unemployment insurance (and employers’ challenges to these claims).

There’s no question in my mind that Johnston filed this challenge against the employee’s rightful benefits solely to harass and persecute this person, because Johnston was upset that this former employee was suing Sidetrack for five counts of harassment and retaliation in federal court. Johnston had available to him the IDES challenge and though he should have known that this challenge would fail, he pushed the button anyway just to cause the employee to sweat and worry if the benefits he depended on to survive after his firing would be taken away from him. It’s actually a separate and additional violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for an employer such as Johnston to file a meritless challenge to unemployment benefits just to harass a former employee….which is ironic because Johnston styles himself as a gay community “civil rights” leader who is constantly claiming that gays are persecuted by Christians. But, yet, here comes Johnston persecuting a Christian employee of his bar and violating this employee’s civil rights with this considered and determined harassment.

An IDES hearing at the local level immediately ruled in the employee’s favor, with the Adjudicator determining in less than a minute of interview with the employee that there was no act of insubordination involved in his firing and that the challenge to his benefits was thus meritless. Johnston then appealed the Adjudicator’s decision and decided to continue harassing the employee by challenging his benefits to the next level, which involved hearings before a Judge in IDES’ appeals division that required the employee to retain an attorney for the proceedings.

During these hearings, Sidetrack’s accountant Portman lied under oath multiple times to the Judge, in an attempt to have the employee’s unemployment benefits taken away from him. The employee suffered immense emotional distress during this process (which stretched on for months), because in this economy he was unable to find another job and still depended on his unemployment benefits. Johnston was clearly aware that Portman committed multiple acts of perjury in the IDES hearings…but gave his blessing to these actions because the goal was to harass and persecute the former employee as much as possible (as punishment for this guy suing Johnston and Sidetrack for the harassment he was subjected to there while he was an employee).

Ultimately, the IDES Judge ruled in the employee’s favor and stated that he did not believe Portman to be credible; the challenge to the benefits was completely meritless. Though the employee was vindicated, he was still forced to endure several months’ of worry and anxiety because Johnston decided to use a government agency to persecute him. This was very much the equivalent of the IRS auditing someone just because he was a Christian, conservative with Tea Party spirit.

Interestingly, this case proves that there’s really nothing an employer has to lose by lying during a challenge to unemployment benefits…because the Attorney General in Illinois will not pursue perjury charges against an employer for lying under oath during these hearings. After speaking to several people in IDES administration, I learned that no one working there could remember a time when an employer was prosecuted for perjury during an IDES hearing…because the prosecutors don’t have the financial resources to go after these people (supposedly). “The judges know that the employer is lying, and then the judge rules that the employee keeps the benefits” was the general consensus of the IDES officials I spoke to. “Their only punishment is that they had to pay a lawyer to be there when they lied, so it cost them money and then they didn’t succeed in taking a person’s benefits away in the end”. There is no mechanism available in Illinois law for an employer to be fined or punished in any way for filing a meritless challenge to an employee’s benefits. But, I believe there should be…since these challenges cause so much grief and stress for people whose energies should be focused solely on finding a new job.

Art Johnston is considered one of the “godfathers” of the gay community in Chicago, with his bar Sidetrack being “the heart of Boystown” (as it’s self-styled on its website). He’s extremely quick to point fingers and label all sorts of Christian, conservative figures “villains” for this, that or the other…especially by using the organization Equality Illinois (which he principally funds) as a proxy to scold his “enemies” as bigots if they oppose anything the Obama Regime does to this country. Simultaneously, Johnston chooses to knowingly file meritless challenges to an employee’s unemployment benefits (just because he can) and sends his accountant to perjure himself during hearings before IDES (because he knows that no one will prosecute him for it). This is very consistent with how the Left operates in general.

“Hypocrisy” is a term the Left seems woefully unacquainted with.

If you look carefully enough where you live, you will see that what’s happening in Washington DC with the IRS right now is just a larger and more high-profile example of what members of the Left do every single day in your community. This is the classic Alinsky Mindset of decimating your opponent (or, “enemy”, as the Left calls them) in any way possible…and specifically using arms of the government to do this wherever they can get away with it.

Whatever happens with the IRS scandal hearings won’t cure the cultural problem we have in this country, embodied in people like Boystown’s own Art Johnston, who are so steeped in the Alinsky Methods of the Left that they use harassment and personal destruction as standard operating procedures (all the while accusing Christians of being the REAL villains in our world!). If this is happening here in Chicago, I know it’s happening where you live…and it’s high time people started talking about all this and deciding as a nation that business-as-usual isn’t acceptable anymore.

QUESTION FOR COMMENTS: Have you seen members of the Left abuse a government agency to persecute or punish an individual where you live? Do you recognize this as a disturbing trend amongst Leftists and Obama’s fellow travelers?

Gay conservative political analyst, essayist, author and radio and TV commentator on politics, pop culture, LGBTQ issues, and current events. To email Kevin directly with a comment or complaint about this or any article, do so at: HillBuzz@gmail.com

[ Click above to embiggen: a clip from the latest Saturday Night Live sketch mocking our Lord and Savior, as broadcast on 2/16/2013. To watch the full clip for yourself, it’s currently available on HULU.com for free, which you can watch HERE ]

Last Saturday (2/16/2013), NBC ran a parody of Quentin Tarantino films called “DJesus Uncrossed”, which was a bastardization of Django Unchained…with a lot of Inglorious Bastards thrown in for good measure (or, for bad taste, depending on your personal perspective). Saturday Night Live heavily employed a laugh track during this faux-movie trailer…so that as our Savior was mocked in various ways these disembodied voices were hysterically overcome with giggles. Such as, when it was implied by the trailer that Jesus Christ “used the N-word a lot” (and that Peter Travers, from (I believe) Rolling Stone, quipped about this).

I’m going out on a limb in noting that a similar sketch entitled DMuhahahammad Unturbaned would have never left the writers’ room at NBC…for fear of the physical consequences to Rockefeller Center and the bat-guano-crazy reaction of Muslims worldwide to a blasphemous depiction of the medieval pedophile they deem to be a “prophet”. Since “the religion of peace” is neither a religion nor peaceful, NBC endeavors never to insult or offend Muslims…because Muslims vociferously police depictions of Muhammad in all forms of media.

Christians, on the other hand, raise little outcry whenever Jesus is impugned or mocked by the likes of Saturday Night Live…and, as a result, that mockery becomes a frequent source of material for unimaginative and talentless writers on shows that were past their prime back when I was still in high school (20 years ago!). Networks like NBC won’t so much as show an actor playing Muhammad…PERIOD…but they have no problem at all running sketches that portray Jesus as a violent, racist, murderer.

This is all part of the Left’s endless war against and persecution of Christians…and it’s important that you understand the REAL role of Saturday Night Live in the Left’s greater propaganda machine within its Ministry of Truth. The reason conservatives have lost the Culture War is because too often they delude themselves into thinking, “That’s just stupid!” or “Saturday Night Live doesn’t matter!” or “The only people who watch that are crazed Lefties anyway so they are preaching to their own choir”.

In reality, Saturday Night Live’s anti-Christian propaganda doesn’t just air once and then disappear into the firmament…it’s actually picked up in lots of ways by the Left and rebroadcast in various venues where it becomes part of a bigger effort to indoctrinate the susceptible into a permanent anti-Christian mindset.

Here in Chicago, there is a textbook, classic example of this at work in Sidetrack the Video Bar…which is the largest and most prominent gay bar in the city, located on Halsted Street and owned by Art Johnston and Pepe Pena (who are essentially the “godfathers” or “Dons” of the Chicago gay community). The anti-Christian videos produced by the likes of Saturday Night Live are collected by Sidetrack’s video production team and then re-edited into smaller clips that pack the anti-Christian sentiment into smaller, more explosive bites.

Those clips are then aired repeatedly to the intoxicated customers of the bar — over and over again — so that it’s resoundingly clear to the gay community of Chicago that Christians are to be targeted, mocked, and persecuted wherever and whenever possible. Since Sidetrack is the biggest and most prominent bar…and its owners are viewed as the “Dons” of the Chicago gay community…there’s immense peer pressure for gays in Chicago to toe the line and behave in the way that Sidetrack seemingly wants them to behave (if they want to keep being welcome in the largest and most prominent gay bar in Chicago).

I’m never sure if straight people understand the importance of being socially accepted in a particular bar, especially the biggest and most prominent gay bar around. A stereotype of straight men is that they do all their business and conduct all their networking on the golf course…so in that sense belonging to the largest and most prominent country club would be the key to a successful life as a straight businessman. For straight women, success in the spheres they inhabit might involve belonging to the largest and most prominent gym or a prestigious social club like The Daughters of the American Revolution or the like.

For gay guys, if you aren’t regularly seen in the largest and most prominent gay bar and if you aren’t known widely as “a friend of the bar” then your social status in the gay community is adversely affected…and you forfeit the networking and status-enhancing opportunities afforded to regular patrons of that bar. If you’re someone who has been made to feel unwelcome in the largest and most prominent gay bar, you become a gay guy who has to miss out on all the big events in the community…and all the benefits that come with attending those events.

So, the pressure is high to be a “good guest” of an establishment and to go along with whatever trend its owners set…by behaving the way those “Dons” instruct you to behave via the videos they play in Orwellian fashion on massive screens throughout the bar.

If you’ve read 1984, you’ll remember the concept of a “Two Minutes Hate”…which is a propaganda tool used by the people in control to incite those watching a film to express hatred and rage at “the enemy” on a regular basis. Johnston and Pena orchestrate “Two Minute Hates” against Christians in the gay community on a regular basis, via the videos they regularly select for exhibition in Sidetrack…knowing that the net effect will be the strengthening of the Left’s propaganda that Christians are the “enemies of the gay community”.

Sidetrack, in fact, employs a Chicago Public School teacher named Bradley Thomas Balof as an MC and event host to really rev up the crowds against “the enemies of the gay communities”…which supplements the spirit of these videos with a live-on-stage maestro of hate who demands the crowd jeer at Christians and shout aloud how they’re going to “get them”, “stop them”, “hurt them”, or “destroy them”. Without fail, all the drunk gays in attendance raise their glasses in the air, their faces red with anger and booze, and follow Balof’s lead to scream out against the Christian “enemies”.

Can you only imagine the outrage in the national media if Muslims were the target of Sidetrack’s “Two Minutes Hate” instead of Christians. I even think that there’d be some pause if Jews were targeted, instead of followers of Christ.

I’ve tried repeatedly to interview Art Johnston to ask him why he needs to keep showing clips like “DJesus Uncrossed” in his bar, instead of just playing fun videos without any attacks made on Christians, but Johnston won’t sit down with me, answer my letters, or return my calls. I just can’t imagine doing the things he does to Christians in his bar unless he’s doing them on purpose…and that purpose is part of a larger strategy on the Left to keep this anti-Christian sentiment flowing in all the various ideological subgroups of the Left where it can take root.

What’s remarkable is the glaring hypocrisy of all of this, too, because gays are who the Left trots out to constantly claim they are persecuted by Christians…with plenty of banners reading “Christians hate gays!” at any Pride Parade event or “equality march” the gay community holds for the cameras. In another Orwellian twist, some people are more equal than others because gays actually accuse other people of doing the things they actually do to Christians themselves!

In the five years I have been running this site as an openly gay Catholic I have not even once had an experience where a Christian said anything evil at all to me for being gay…but on a sustained and regular basis I’ve had employees and customers of Sidetrack harass and malign me for being a “traitor” or “enemy of the gay community” for not renouncing my allegiance to the Church. Christians never attempt to make me choose between being gay and being Christian, but gay “Dons” like Art Johnston apply constant pressure to force gays to turn their back on Christ if they want to be accepted in the gay community.

I believe this is an orchestrated strategy on the Left, since it’s widely known that a gay man truly does need access to the largest and most prominent gay bar in a big city to thrive socially and professionally in gay circles…and the threat of cutting off access to those benefits is enough to force gay men to join the “Two Minutes Hate” that bars like Sidetrack incite against Christians with the videos they play and the speeches their staff members make.

Saturday Night Live and other entertainment arms of the Ministry of Truth provide the prepackaged material needed for the “Two Minutes Hate”…and Art Johnston serves up the venues for exhibition…and then his staff sees to it that the message is delivered to the desired targets for their anti-Christian conditioning.

This is happening where you live too, but if you aren’t a frequent visitor to or observer of the gay community you might not realize it.

But, this is how the Left won the Culture War…while Christians sat back and deluded themselves to believe “Oh, no one pays attention to that!” or “That show hasn’t been relevant in 20 years!” .

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NOTE: Hulu.com has a tendency to take videos down after a while, so if you are reading this at some point in the future and the Hulu link at the top doesn’t work, I think the Amazon Instant Video link will work for as long as Amazon is around. You’d have to buy the episode of SNL to see the “DJesus Uncrossed” clip, though…and I’d advise never giving SNL or NBC any of your hard-earned money if you can avoid it. But, if you REALLY need to see the clip and Hulu is not playing it for free then I suppose this is an alternative (since NBC is very aggressive about removing its clips from YouTube):

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UPDATE: For those unfamiliar with Sidetrack the Video Bar and how endemic the hypocrisy is there, I want to remind you that this is the very same bar that posted photos on its official website of a friend of the bar’s owners dressed up as Adolf Hitler for last year’s Halloween party.

So, the bar’s photographer specifically picked out those photos of Adolf Hitler to appear in the prominently-promoted galleries of photos on the website, when a great many other photos were not similarly chosen for inclusion in that gallery. And no one at Sidetrack had sense enough to appreciate that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis persecuted and then executed gays back in the 1930s and 1940s. You know, in the Holocaust…which wasn’t exclusively used against Jews, but also included the elimination of gays (branded with pink triangles), gypsies, the disabled, and other minorities in German-conquered territories.

But, in the year 2013…the largest and most prominent gay bar in Chicago specifically chose to celebrate dressing up as Adolf Hitler for Halloween, like it was a good thing.

For those of you who scratch your heads at the Gaystapo’s attacks on Christians while simultaneously showing fervent deference to Muslims, include Sidetrack’s promotion of Adolf Hitler Halloween costumes with that insanity.

More on the bizarre and hypocritical things Sidetrack and its owners do HERE.

Gay conservative political analyst, essayist, author and radio and TV commentator on politics, pop culture, LGBTQ issues, and current events. To email Kevin directly with a comment or complaint about this or any article, do so at: HillBuzz@gmail.com

One of the most important things you need to know about “The Tolerant Left” is that as a gay conservative and Christian man, I have always been treated better by conservatives and Christians for being gay than I’ve been treated by the “gay community” for being conservative and Christian.

The “gay community” yowls so loudly about discrimination as cover for the hate-fueled attacks gays launch on a daily basis against Christians, conservatives, and Republicans; it is a classic and effective strategy because the “gay community” gets to do to others all the things it claims are being done to them and no one in conservative ranks is brave enough to call them out on the hypocrisy. Welcome to the dark side of Boystown’s rainbow, where all the Left’s dirtiest attacks on Republicans originate.

It’s actually quite fascinating how much cognitive dissonance exists in the “gay community”, and how a group of people who routinely complain about being supposedly “hated” by Republicans are, in fact, the only ones on the field displaying any hatred at all. This is an old-school Alinsky tactic: always accuse the other side of doing to you what you are aggressively doing to them so you can more easily get away with it. Read the rest of this entry »

Gay conservative political analyst, essayist, author and radio and TV commentator on politics, pop culture, LGBTQ issues, and current events. To email Kevin directly with a comment or complaint about this or any article, do so at: HillBuzz@gmail.com

UPDATE 8/21/11: Jared Hall at Downtown Cupid Productions edited out the horrible attack on Trig on Sunday afternoon 8/21/11 and is now trying to pretend none of this ever happened. Just like the Left to try to flush things down the Memory Hole when they get caught. The new, edited video retains the “Only@Brunch” attacks on Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, however. You can comment on the new, edited video here: Only@Brunch pilot episode.

Another thing Jared Hall at Downtown Cupid Productions is doing is trying to curry sympathy by claiming someone called him “Hitler” in comments left on his YouTube site, which is the excuse he gave in the video you’ll find below regarding why he deleted all comments.

Well, Jared, we screengrabbed all the comments left for you on YouTube before you deleted them. There is no reference to Hitler anywhere but your own imagination, sister mister. Read all the comments left for you, and you will see that for yourself. I managed to grab all of them before you deleted them at 2:27pm 8/21/11 when you attempted to erase everything related to Jesse Budlong’s hatefully cruel attack on Trig Palin on your pilot episode of “Only@Brunch”.

How about your next episode focus on Jesse Budlong explaining why he thinks it’s funny to mock people with special needs, and why you as a producer allowed this mocking of a toddler with Down Syndrome to be broadcast in the first place? If there’s time on your show, further explain why you’re now in DELETE, DELETE, DELETE mode — even though everything you and your co-hosts have done is saved on multiple hard drives coast to coast.

I, however, don’t feel Hall has explained himself well enough, because it remains a mystery why he chose to air this episode with the inclusion of the attack on Trig Palin. When taping anything like the “Only@Brunch” show, there is always the ability to stop, in the middle of the segment, and start again if something as atrocious as the jab at a Down Syndrome toddler happens. This was not a live broadcast, but a production that was filmed, edited, and approved for broadcast by Jared Hall and Downtown Cupid Productions.

At the very least, Hall should have, on camera, scolded co-host Jesse Budlong for mocking Trig Palin.

But, Hall, and fellow cast members Bradley Thomas Balof, Terrence Chappell, Craig Rathwell, and Brian Felder laughed along with Budlong and didn’t seize the opportunity to tell him that his comment was inappropriate and had really crossed a line.

What’s caught on tape in this “Only@Brunch” clip is something the media never shows you, but something that’s very real and present every day here in Boystown: the ease in which urban, gay men conjure true evil and aim it at conservatives and Christians (and their special needs children).

Budlong was so quick to take a hit at little Trig because he and his friends most likely do this sort of thing all the time. It comes so naturally for these guys to be this cruel, because cruelty towards others is a part of their daily lives. There is a whole generation of gay men typified by the “Only@Brunch” bullies who came of age taking their cues from Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, and the monsters who write on The Daily Kos and Democratic Underground.”Comedians” like Kathy Griffin, Sandra Bernhardt, Margaret Cho, Bill Maher, and others further stoke this hate and encourage gay people to viciously attack conservatives and Christians whenever possible.

Here’s something you can do today to help put an end to this behavior.

Please ask your friends, especially those with special needs people in their lives, to do the same.

Be professional and mature in your remarks, but please let Jared Hall, Jesse Budlong, Bradley Thomas Balof, Terrence Chappell, Craig Rathwell, and Brian Felder know their behavior is unacceptable and their decision to go ahead and air a pilot containing the mocking of Trig Palin was reprehensible.

Not only did none of these people stop Budlong’s remark while cameras were rolling, but none of them called for a reshooting of that segment minus the hatred directed at a toddler.

As a gay man living here in Boystown, I demand better of this from the gay community.

And I ask your help in getting this message across to the “Only@Brunch” bullies.

Gay conservative political analyst, essayist, author and radio and TV commentator on politics, pop culture, LGBTQ issues, and current events. To email Kevin directly with a comment or complaint about this or any article, do so at: HillBuzz@gmail.com